Ann Christy - Silo 49 - Deep Dark

He plucked a small chalkboard off the table and gave it to her with a piece of chalk. She wrote, ‘I feel better. Neck hurts. Why can’t talk?’

He read the words even as she wrote and said, “Medic says that there is a little bone in the neck that he thinks is damaged.” At her alarmed look he put his fingers to a spot right above his Adam’s apple and said, “Not that kind of bone. It’s a little one that just sort of floats around in there. But it will hurt and make it hard to talk.”

She wrote quickly, ‘How long? Forever?’

He shook his head and soothed her, “No, honey. I’m making a mess of this. It will heal and he thinks you’ll be able to talk pretty soon. It’s very hard to break. He said it is connected to everything else by a lot of connections so if it gets swollen or jarred or anything, it can be very painful.”

Marina tried to nod understanding but even that hurt. She wrote, ‘Taylor?’

Joseph wrinkled his brow in a way that let Marina know from long experience that he was unsatisfied with the answer to a puzzle. She wished she wouldn’t have asked. At least she couldn’t talk and he wouldn’t expect a long explanation. He did answer though. “You were there. He had a break. He’s at remediation but no one is talking to him. Only the council medic.”

The last was said with a distinct air of suppressed suspicion. He said it like he really wanted to talk to Taylor and not just because Taylor had throttled his wife. Marina motioned for a wiper and cleared her board, creating a little shower of white dust on her blanket. She scribbled, ‘Not his fault. Piotr died. Very upset. Thinks too much.’

She would have held her breath or chewed her lip if moving her jaw didn’t hurt so much. She hoped he would accept that and let it go. He sighed and squeezed the hand still holding the chalk. “You’re so kind. Yes, I hadn’t thought about his caster being the one that died like that. Very hard. Very hard for anyone.” He patted her hand and Marina silently thanked Greta for her fast thinking.

She extracted her hand to free the chalk and write. She wanted to ask for Greta, to get moving, to get back to the find she had made and not been able to fully explore. She wanted to get out of bed. When she made to put the chalk to the board, Joseph kindly, but firmly, plucked it away and said, “No more. If you woke up I was supposed to let you know what happened and give you five minutes. After that, I’m supposed to give you another dose. You have to sleep so you don’t move your throat and neck too much.”

She made a moue and earned a laugh from Joseph. He said, “Pouting does not work on me.” He poured a small spoonful of medicine from a bottle and spooned it into her mouth a few drops at a time. It was harder to swallow than she thought. The instinct to swallow was so basic that she hadn’t realized the mechanics of it before. By the time the drops were gone she was already sleepy again. He helped to lower her back down and tucked her in like she hadn’t been since early childhood. She felt him press a kiss to her forehead and felt so very safe and loved. It was easy to fall asleep.

Days passed slowly and Marina grew increasingly impatient. Greta had only popped her head in for visits when Joseph was there and she was unable to speak in detail. Her indirect references toward their project had earned only cold glances. She was healing but using her voice was still taboo. That made it even harder to be subtle since everything was chalked onto a board.

When she finally got a look at her neck she had been appalled at what she looked like. An angry set of handprints encircled her swollen neck in shades of purple and blue and bright red. There were even bruises on the point of her chin and the back edges of her jaw. It was horrible looking.

While Joseph was out of the room she gave her voice a tentative try and found that almost nothing came out like it should. It was a weak and reedy thing that was also strangely deep. It sounded a bit like a boy’s does when in the process of changing. And it hurt.

Everything having to do with eating, talking, swallowing or moving her neck hurt. While she was drugged and asleep the medic had inserted a tube that ran from her nose to her stomach. She had to suffer the unique experience of feeling the change in temperature as liquid food was forced through the tube and down into her stomach. Without having to go through her mouth, she found herself nauseous after she was fed. The mind worked in mysterious ways.

Sela visited every single day, though Marina was careful to hide her neck from her daughter with a handy piece of sheet or by draping a towel across it. She looked at it often and Marina knew she wanted to see what had happened, but Marina nudged the topic away and Sela complied. As a deputy’s shadow, there was no lying to her about what had happened, at least not lying any further than the official story, so Sela knew that a person had hurt her mother. She handled it relatively well, Marina thought, and was proud of her.

During one of the other lulls where Joseph was gone for a break, she had searched the room and the things that had followed her from her former room. There was nothing from her finds in any of the drawers. Even the small book she had found first and her pack were gone. She had crept down the hall to her old room but it was as bare as if she had never been there at all.

After six days had passed in bed, the medic pronounced her fit to resume light duties but only on the condition she kept the tube in and refrained from trying to speak. She had readily agreed, bobbing her head in agreement to all his terms despite the dull pain that resulted. Joseph and she had gotten into what might be termed an argument if any exchange in which one party was limited to abbreviated words on a chalkboard could be called such.

He was adamant that she come home. He argued that she couldn’t possibly deny that whatever she was doing — emphasis on whatever — had already caused her pain and brought her near to losing her life. He loved her and she could see that. She knew he would rather stay right where he was and watch over her if she didn’t come home.

She used his own excuses after coming home with a black eye or split lip after subduing an angry drunk or breaking up a fight. He looked at her with such disappointment that she nearly crumbled. Then she thought of the blue orb against the black of a space so big she couldn’t truly imagine it and regained her resolve.

Marina was up and around and ready to confront Greta if that was what was needed. Her antsy behavior let Joseph know the time for bedside care was over. He took his leave and returned to duty after following her around for a day and fussing every time she did something he thought too ambitious. He barely got a foot onto the stairs when Marina stopped waving and marched toward the archives where she hoped to find Greta.

Greta was there and at her accustomed place at the table. Instead of the maintenance records of before, she was surrounded by all the treasures that Marina had uncovered. She looked up from her reading, the giant Legacy book open in front of her. They said nothing for a moment and just stood those feet apart, looking at each other. The last two standing, the look seemed to say.

The historian broke eye contact first, her eyes returning to the page. She asked, “How much of this did you look at before the Taylor thing happened?”

The question was a loaded one and the tone let Marina know it was meant that way. She wasn’t just asking what she had been able to read, but how long she had hid it all so she could read it alone. She was asking how long she had been scurrying around while the rest of them followed the rules.

Marina couldn’t answer her with her voice so she approached the table and knocked on the surface sharply with her knuckles. While Greta looked on, Marina scribbled her answer on the chalkboard she now carried around with her. Finished, she thrust the board at Greta like she was daring her to do something. She had written, ‘Returned late. Had to see if there. Then T came to kill me.’